Appraisal -Tendency Framework: Emotions and Perceptions of Social Injustice

This research project studies the Appraisal-Tendency Framework. Specifically, it observes whether emotional dispositions, such as sadness-proneness or trait anger, affect judgements made on whether a situation is just or unjust. In addition, this study also presents the question of whether gender impacts perceptions of fairness. All participants will be recruited from a Southeastern University. This study consists of two parts. For part one, all participants will complete an online survey to assess individual differences. Part two contains the experimental manipulations. This study uses a 2 (emotional induction) x 2 (gender of actor) design. For the emotional induction, participants will be randomly assigned to view a clip meant to induce feelings of sadness or feelings of anger. All participants will be asked to write a short response of a real-life emotional experience matching the emotion of the condition they are assigned to. They will then be randomly assigned to view a clip of an unjust situation carried out by either a female professor or a male professor. The outcome of this study could provide organizations with a better understanding of why certain emotions relate to certain judgements and decisions

Decision Making: Do People with Dark Triad Traits Utilize Advice?

This research study seeks to gain a better understanding of the effects of the dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) on advice taking. This research examined whether or not the dark triad traits result in working professionals being more or less likely to accept advice when making a decision. Past research has shown that outcomes are generally more favorable when the person who is making the decision takes the advice of another person into consideration. Despite this fact, I hypothesized that people with higher narcissistic or psychopathic traits will not accept advice when making a decision. Additionally, I hypothesized that Machiavellians may be the exception in the dark triad and would be more likely to utilize advice. Results indicated that narcissists were less likely to utilize advice and Machiavellians were more likely to utilize advice. There were no significant findings regarding those with psychopathic tendencies. Organizations could benefit from these findings when considering how much their advice may be considered when an employee with narcissistic or Machiavellian tendencies is making a decision